


five secrets from Emperor Palpatine's personal files

by Lisse



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Bleach, Star Trek (2009), Star Wars - All Media Types, Stargate Atlantis, Terminator - All Media Types
Genre: 5 Things, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-20
Updated: 2009-08-20
Packaged: 2017-11-05 10:25:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/405373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lisse/pseuds/Lisse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(or: five times someone told a Sith Lord to shove it)</p>
            </blockquote>





	five secrets from Emperor Palpatine's personal files

1\. _Transmission 895-AL-SG_

The research outpost, located at the far end of a particularly long and unstable hyperspace corridor, has the dubious distinction of being the last place in the known galaxy to receive Order 66. It arrives eleven days after the massacre at the Jedi temple and the collapse of the Republic, bundled amid the standard biweekly transmission's deep-space telemetry readings and messages from various friends and relatives and flagged for the mission's civilian and diplomatic leader; there is no way to contact the outpost's individual clone troops directly, and the military commander is, after all, a Jedi himself.

The next day, the outpost's answering transmission comes in a quick burst, containing none of the usual reports, requests, or updates. There's only a single message, addressed to no one in particular and left unencrypted for anyone who cares to read it.

_Order received._

_Go to hell_.

It's the last anyone hears of the outpost, its scientists, or its soldiers for a very long time.

 

2\. _Temple ID File J019-23-X12_

When Anakin Skywalker is still a young padawan, there is a buzz of scandal in the temple's corridors.

At the time, he doesn't know exactly why the loudest, friendliest, and most powerful healer he's ever met is expelled from the Order - certainly not that it involves a woman with a carefree laugh and a round stomach and wild, tangled brown hair - and he never learns that the former Jedi's response to Chancellor Palpatine's sly hints is to laugh in his face and ask who he thinks he's fooling, old man.

What he does learn eventually is that the Jedi settles on a pastoral planet somewhere in the Outer Rim, and that there is a marriage and children, and that soon enough it is his duty to wipe out the last traces of the Jedi.

He kills the woman because she reminds him of what could have been.

(He leaves her little son alive - red hair falling in his face and tears half-hidden by the rain - because maybe he does, too.)

 

3\. _Imperial Bounty I2-CJ_

In the Rebellion, there are stories about one particular cell that have taken on an aura of myth.

Not because it's better than other cells. Oh, no. Nothing like that. This cell is whispered about in tones of quiet, hushed, half-disbelieving awe because - at least if the gossip is credible - it existed _before_  the Republic fell.

Like - get this - somehow the people who keep trying to blow up the Empire's Century Shipyards _knew what was going to happen_.

Crazy, right?

 

4\. _Incident Report A01_

The little planet is so small that it's a wonder it's habitable at all. It is, however, quite rich in natural resources, and so an expeditionary force is sent to survey the land and either forcibly relocate or exterminate the primitive locals as necessary.

Some time later, the survivors stagger back to the Core with barely-coherent stories of people much too powerful to be Jedi and the planet itself turning against them. Eventually word trickles up to the Emperor, whose attempts to see the world through the Force aren't so much blocked as casually pushed aside by something ancient beyond ancient and very, very protective.

He settles for removing the world from the navigational maps and having any mention of it wiped from all databases, official and otherwise.

There may be something stronger than him out there, but that doesn't mean anyone has to know about it.

 

5\. _Imperial Navy Archive File H02-P7BW-L-1701_

The first thing most people notice about the Imperial frigate captain is his self-assurance, which extends from his constant smirk to the way he slouches casually in the face of trained interrogators. Even in the grainy holo, one can see his confidence in the set of his shoulders - that absolute surety that he's in the right and that no one else can do a damn thing about it.

"Where is your ship?" the interrogators ask. He shrugs.

"Where is your crew?" they ask. He laughs.

"Where are the plans?" they ask. He says something about oops, must have left them with this girl he met a couple missions back, and continues to look maddeningly smug - possibly because he knows his missing crew is about to stage the sort of rescue that will turn up in strategy lectures at the officers' academy for decades to come.

The first thing a few select people - the Force-sensitive ones, whether they know it or not - notice about the captain is the way the galaxy seems to have gone still around him, like it knows he's meant to do something important and is simply waiting for him to get his act together.

(Which is probably why when the wayward frigate pops out of hyperspace over the supposedly secret Rebel base three stops after Yavin, and when its slightly battered but still irrepressible captain asks if a certain princess put certain stolen plans to good use, all Leia Organa can do is shake her head and laugh.)


End file.
